The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society,
fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon
others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.

"The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on
Analytical Psychology. P.305

Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to
himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows
whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the
persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.

"Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious. P.43

Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things
nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A certain
kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up
to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas-the
professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives
exclusively against the background of his own biography. . . . The garment of Deianeira has grown
fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus
shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to
transform himself into what he really is. One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona
is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

"Concerning Rebirth" (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
P.221

I once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage - in fact, one might easily call him a
saint. I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him. My
feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better
myself. Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me.... Well, nothing of the sort has ever
happened to me since. But this I did learn: that any man who becomes one with his persona can
cheerfully let all disturbances manifest themselves through his wife without her noticing it, though
she pays for her self-sacrifice with a bad neurosis.

"The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology. P.306

Since the differentiated consciousness of civilized man has been granted an effective instrument for
the practical realization of its contents through the dynamics of his will, there is all the more danger,
the more he trains his will, of his getting lost in one-sidedness and deviating further and further from
the laws and roots of his being.

"The Psychology of the Child Archetype" (1940) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious. P.276

When there is a marked change in the individual's state of consciousness, the unconscious contents
which are thereby constellated will also change. And the further the conscious situation moves
away from a certain point of equilibrium, the more forceful and accordingly the more dangerous
become the unconscious contents that are struggling to restore the balance. This leads ultimately
to a dissociation: on the one hand, ego-consciousness makes convulsive efforts to shake off an
invisible opponent (if it does not suspect its next-door neighbour of being the devil!), while on the
other hand it increasingly falls victim to the tyrannical will of an internal "Government opposition"
which displays all the characteristics of a daemonic subman and superman combined. When a few
million people get into this state, it produces the sort of situation which has afforded us such an
edifying object-lesson every day for the last ten years.* These contemporary events betray their
psychological background by their very singularity. The insensate destruction and devastation are
a reaction against the deflection of consciousness from the point of equilibrium. For an equilibrium
does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religion a "careful
consideration" of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril.

"The Psychology of Transference" (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.394
*The years 1935-1945

Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One
can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible
and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious
responsibility.

"Psychological Typology" (1936). In CW 6: Psychological Types. P. 964

Hidden in the neurosis is a bit of still undeveloped personality, a precious fragment of the psyche
lacking which a man is condemned to resignation, bitterness, and everything else that is hostile to
life. A psychology of neurosis that sees only the negative elements empties out the baby with the
bath-water, since it neglects the positive meaning and value of these "infantile' i.e., creative-fantasies.

"The State of Psychotherapy Today" (1934). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.355

We yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite impossible beings, that if
everyone were to appear as he really is a frightful social catastrophe would ensue. Many people
today take "man as he really is" to mean merely the eternally discontented, anarchic, rapacious element in human beings, quite forgetting that these same human beings have also erected those firmly
established forms of civilization which possess greater strength and stability than all the anarchic
undercurrents. The strengthening of his social personality is one of the essential conditions for
man's existence. Were it not so, humanity would cease to be. The selfishness and rebelliousness
we meet in the neurotic's psychology are not "man as he really is" but an infantile distortion. In
reality the normal man is "civic minded and moral"; he created his laws and observes them, not
because they are imposed on him from without-that is a childish delusion-but because he loves law
and order more than he loves disorder and lawlessness.

"Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious. P.442

The true genius nearly always intrudes and disturbs. He speaks to a temporal world out of a world
eternal. He says the wrong things at the right time. Eternal truths are never true at any given
moment in history. The process of transformation has to make a halt in order to digest and
assimilate the utterly impractical things that the genius has produced from the storehouse of eternity.
Yet the genius is the healer of his time, because anything he reveals of eternal truth is healing.

The genius will come through despite everything, for there is something absolute and indomitable
in his nature. The so-called "misunderstood genius" is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally
he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself.

"The Gifted Child" (1943). In CW 17: The Development of Personality. P. 248

Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers,
while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the
transitory into the realm of the ever enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny
of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity
to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.

"On the Relation of Analytical Psychology of Poetry" (1922). In CW 15: The Spirit in Man, Art and
Literature. P.129

To be "normal" is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general
level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult
to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world's work-for them the moral compulsion
to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes-deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell
of sterility and hopelessness.

"Problems of Modern Psychotherapy" (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P. 161

Nothing in us ever remains quite uncontradicted, and consciousness can take up no position which
will not call up, somewhere in the dark corners of the psyche, a negation or a compensatory effect,
approval or resentment. This process of coming to terms with the Other in us is well worth while,
because in this way we get to know aspects of our nature which we would not allow anybody else
to show us and which we ourselves would never have admitted.

Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955) CW 14: P. 706

The "other" in us always seems alien and unacceptable; but if we let ourselves be aggrieved the
feeling sinks in, and we are the richer for this little bit of self-knowledge.

"Psychological Aspects of the Kore" (1941). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious. P. 918

If we do not fashion for ourselves a picture of the world, we do not see ourselves either, who are the
faithful reflections of that world. Only when mirrored in our picture of the world can we see
ourselves in the round. Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves
whole and complete. Never shall we put any face on the world other than our own, and we have to
do this precisely in order to find ourselves. For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands
man, the creator of his instruments.

"Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung" (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the
Psyche. P.737